Marathon

Nothing is ever quite what it seems. Remember that and you might not fail completely.

Even a simple equation. A very well known one,

2+2=4

for example, depends on and implies a lot.

Any number plus itself is even.

The base used here is at least base 5. It could be base 35896 even.

The language the person writes in is most likely English, but no guarantees.

Assuming the lower ASCII characters are being used, if one were to write pi in base 128 that sequence could be found eventually.

And then of course that might not even be an equation.

Given a simple character replacement code that could actually be "tutor".

Anyone may be more than what you would think.

Anyone may be less.

And some are a bit of both.

Hammer-ons and pull-offs are what I eat for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. And sometimes midnight snacks. While I may not play an actual instrument, at least I play a fake one like a boss. Demonstrating my decent skills in front of others gives quite a rush. Playing with friends is definitely my favorite part of the whole thing though. Speaking of friends, my friends were trying to get me to go to this convention thing. I had plans to stay at home and do more important stuff, like watch more ponies or something.

Yes, I am a brony. Big deal. A lot of people are. A lot of people aren't. Meh. Anyhow, then my friends mentioned the video game tournament that would be held there. Because, you know, I like video games. Good plan.

This plan was great in theory but not so great in practice. Usually at public tournaments they play first person shooters. Like CoD. Or Halo. Or UT. Or Quake. Or CS. Or TF2. Or possibly even Ghost Recon. Is there even a multiplayer for that? Reluctance turned into solid determination not to go. FPS games are not my strong suit. They're so not my strong suit it’s more like a petrified log from Yellowstone than a nice 200$ suit that even comes with a tux. And that's barely remotely related to any of the spades, clubs, diamonds and/or hearts that so many are familiar with. It's odd then that I happen to know so many titles off the top of my head. It may be wondered then why I've played MW3 for 5 hours straight. It's simple. The campaign is awesome. My skills are not.

After unsuccessfully attempting to convince me that going there would be more fun than listening to a looped version of Smile Smile Smile, they finally rolled a 20 for their diplomacy check. They mentioned that there would be a Rockband/Guitar Hero category. They only got as far as “Rockba-” before I barrelled out the door and out to the car with my wallet. Then they dragged me back and explained that I needed a costume and it wasn’t going to be for about two weeks. Then it took a good deal of more convincing that no, I could not travel in time and/or use cryogenics on myself. I had to have a costume, and I had to be available to help with the costume.

    Sorry, Pinkie Pie, but you don’t need to be friends with EVERYone, just the right ones. With good friends come good get-ups. Being a Halo fan (even though my skill at the game is rather minimal as has been discussed in probably too great detail above), I created a sweet Spartan suit with my friend. It was green with some black and brown highlights. The faceplate was gold with an off-color marking shaped in the troll face. My friend is AWESOME. My friend is AWESOME. Did I mention they were awesome? I think I forgot to mention that.

When she finished off the last bits by herself and summoned me to her house, she was wearing the helmet and asked “Hey Evan, u mad bro?” Oh. That reminds me. My name is Evan Porter. In addition to the suit itself, it came with the assault rifle, a needle rifle, the pistol, one plasma grenade, and two boxes, one labeled “Active Camouflage” and the other "Sprint". They even had the icons printed out. Did I mention my friend is so awesome that they don’t just drink awesome sauce, they could raise the sea level more than even Al Gore's take on global warming ever could? Yeah.

Slowly, agonizingly, and gloriously the day finally came. After settling carpools and such we headed off. At the convention itself, we stuck together for roughly an hour before breaking apart like, well, teenagers at a generic anime-cosplay-who-knows-what convention. Having never been to one of these before, the various costumes bedazzled my eyes. Everyone had all sorts of costumes from The Terminator to Mario and even Derpy and look at that one over there! They’re... oh wait they aren’t wearing a costume. Never mind. They look vaguely famous for some reason.

Anyhow, after wandering aimlessly for a few minutes something caught my eye, besides another incredible costume. It was a TV screen. A widescreen TV, to be exact. On this screen was an active video game. Instantly my mind identified it as pro bass, guitar, pro drums and harmony vocals playing Smoke on the Water via Rockband 3. Now THAT'S my kind of party! After a short walk and a far too long wait in line for the ordinary guitar (must have been a whopping 45 seconds until the song ended), it was my turn.

A short discussion settled us on Free Bird. I asked the pro stringed instrument player which line they wanted, and they said "Oh, you can have the guitar." Some people are nice like that. A brief internal conflict ensued in which I tried to decide if I wanted to do Hard and quite possibly get 98-100% or Expert and wind up around my usual 95%. I thought to myself "Expert is more fun anyways. Besides, nobody's going to be judging you, right? Right? At least not excessively." Little did I know...

The exact details are irrelevant, but here are some highlights. I finally stopped biffing up the first hammer-on string, kept my rhythm straight on the descending 4's and did perfect on the cross-descending 3's. Of course, as always happens whenever I do well on the other parts, I lost my rhythm on the build-up orange with yellow hammerons streak. Nonetheless, I was VERY excited because I broke my record. I stood there, fist in the air and eyes closed, with the afterimage of a 97% burning in the back of my mind. Not perfect, nowhere near, but at least okay.

Someone walked up behind me and said "You did pretty good."

"Thanks."

"But not quite good enough."

He paused and I winced.

He continued with "... BRONY." and pushed me. Hard. The sort of hard push that Arnold Schwarzenegger would give. I stumbled, opened my eyes and turned around to yell at the man. There was no person there. Indeed, there was nobody around. Just a bunch of trees, plants and dirt. I don't know about you, but suddenly being not in a building is rather frightening. I held the guitar which was in my hands in what I hoped was a threatening pose, with my hands on the neck and the body pointed away.

After taking a fourth look at the guitar, it then struck me that I still had it. I said "Uh oh. I should probably give this back." Or at least I tried to. I didn't hear anything. A few further futile attempts to speak resulted in me twisting and pulling off my helmet. This proved to be HIGHLY disorienting as my vision swung and continued facing in the same direction as my helmet. Dizzy, I dropped the helmet. Naturally, the helmet faced me. Unnaturally, I looked at my headless body.

Most people would probably scream if they saw their head missing. I could not scream, and I'm not most people. So, I just stood there thinking "Huh. Where did my head go? Heh. I don't have a head! Apparently I don't need one. Looks like Bob was right. Oh wait, no, the slime was talking about brains. Good movie anyways. Wait. Is my head INSIDE my helmet somehow? This is SO COOL!" I walked my body forwards and bent down to grab my helmet. Poking around inside my helmet revealed no hidden head. It did feel weird however. It felt like I was touching the inside of my skull. For that matter, HOLDING my helmet felt like I was holding my head. Some experimentation soon revealed that for some reason my sense of touch was through my costume.

Of course, you can only poke the inside of your head for so long before finally starting to get weirded out. The internal monologue continued, "Okay, this is officially moving right on down to freaky town. I swear if these trees start turning into people I'll-GAH!" As usual, just thinking about certain things will cause them to occur. In this case, a tree turned into a man who walked towards me. A man with a face I knew. A man with a face many know. A man who, if this really was him, would explain A LOT. Jack Black is a pretty crazy but funny guy, after all. At this point I decided that I had spontaneously developed epilepsy and had played too many video games. Perfectly reasonable, right?

"Hah. Epilepsy? Really? Listen, I'll answer some of your questions, and not answer some of your questions. Yes, I am the man that shoved you into Equestria. Yes, I just said Equestria. Yes, you are now a walking suit of armor. No, not a costume, a suit of armor. No, I am not going to explain. You're going to have to figure that one out yourself. Yes, this is real in the sense that you are real. No, again, I'm not going to explain. Yes, I am cooler than you. That's the first thing you must learn about interdimensional trolling, young cricket."

Still stunned at all the stuff he said, I did nothing as the man walked away. He pulled a door out of nowhere and put it onto the ground. He grabbed the doorknob then turned to me and said "Okay, a few final things. First, have fun. Or at least try to. Second, don't insult games. Even you admit the reason you don't like most games is because you suck at them. Third, remember who you are. A stupid nerdy kid with only a few skills. And some vague kind of morals system." He opened the door, walked into what looked like some part of the convention I had very recently been a part of, and shut the door. After a moment the door fell over. And melted. Seriously. It melted like it was made of ice and tried to take a vacation on Venus or something.

After watching the molten wood slowly seep into the ground for a while, I took my bearings. It looked like there was a hill off in the distance. Maybe the height advantage would help me to figure out just where the heck in Equestria I was. I stopped walking. Equestria? I was in EQUESTRIA? BEST! DAY! EVER!!! I smiled and skipped instead of walking. Today was going to be a great day. Then I heard a roar right behind me and turned around just in time to get full body slammed quite forcefully. Emphasis on WAS going to be a great day.